The title of ‘best-selling car’ in the world is fraught with asterisks and strange classifications, but a good argument could be made for the Tesla Model Y. Is the Model Y a car? Maybe, maybe not, but neither is the Toyota Corolla Cross and that often gets lumped in with Corolla sales. Whatever best-selling-car you believe in, the Model Y is undoubtedly important and popular. A new one? Oh boy. Let’s get excited.
It’s a good thing that Tesla makes a lot of its vehicles in China because, well, China does not want to export its rare earth minerals to other countries. That’s bad news for automakers outside of China because many of those minerals are necessary for making electric cars.
And speaking of the uncertain future, CES 2024 is not going to be quite as car-heavy as it’s been in the past, and the automotive-centric stuff this year is going to be tinged with the kind of sober realism that Vegas isn’t usually known for.
Finally, let’s round out the day with a look at the December car market.
The Next Project ‘Juniper’ Model Y Is Reportedly Coming In 2024
Tesla constantly improves its cars, but it rarely updates them stylistically. This is a notable change from how automakers typically operate.
Given that the Model Y was unveiled in March of 2019 and went on sale a year later, it would be well overdue for at least a refresh if it were from any other automaker. With Tesla, though, it’s not clear how long a model is supposed to go in between refreshes. The oldest guide we have is the Model S, which has been on sale for more than a decade and has undergone many performance enhancements but has only had one really significant styling update in 2016 (that’s when the grille went away), though there was also a rather subtle facelift in 2021. The Model 3 just got a facelift after being on sale for about six years.
It seems like Tesla isn’t going to wait that long for the Model Y, its most popular and important model, at least according to this update from Bloomberg:
The 2024 version of the Model Y will have much more obvious exterior and interior changes than the most-recent update in October, which added a new wheel design and ambient lighting, the people said, declining to elaborate.
The first batch of the newest Model Ys will be made from the second phase of Tesla’s Shanghai facility, which will suspend production for around a week during the New Year holiday for a partial upgrade, one of the people said. More adjustments will have to be made prior to mass production, they added.
A representative for Tesla in China declined to comment.
The “more obvious exterior and interior changes” bit is interesting, as the design has stayed quite similar for its three-year run, though perhaps it’ll just follow the design tweaks of the Model 3. Also is the fact that this change is starting in China, where Tesla faces a ton of competition. Will that company get the design first and then the rest of the world has to wait for it to trick down? It’s not clear.
All this comes as Tesla is about to record another strong fourth quarter, albeit probably not strong enough to overcome demand issues in the United States and the increased cost of borrowing money according to Reuters.
Tesla likely delivered 1.82 million vehicles globally in 2023, up 37% from 2022, with about 473,000 units in the fourth quarter, according to 14 analysts polled by LSEG.
In January, Musk said that Tesla has the potential to achieve 2 million deliveries this year, if there was no “freaking force majeure”. But as recently as October, he warned that higher borrowing costs were pressuring demand.
Can the Cybertruck and revised models push Tesla to 2 million in 2024?
I want to say one word to you. Just one word: Gallium
Everyone gets obsessed with lithium because it’s both the first word in modern batteries (lithium ion, lithium iron phosphate, et cetera) and typically the most common rare earth element by volume used in batteries. It’s also not particularly rare. The problem is that China got such a huge jump on mining and refining that the rest of the world fell far behind.
This problem gets worse when talking about essential EV materials like cobalt, germanium, and gallium. Some of this stuff isn’t even for batteries. Gallium nitride, which is a light, cheap-to-produce, and superconductive metal, is what makes on-board car chargers work way, way better.
While Europe and the United States try to find ways to limit the reliance on Chinese materials in domestically-produced EVs, China is doing its best to remind those countries how much they currently needs China.
From Bloomberg via The Detroit News:
Beijing put technology for making rare-earth metals and rare-earth magnets on a list of items can’t be transfered overseas, according to a document from the Ministry of Commerce. The move by the world’s dominant supplier of the minerals comes as its geopolitical rivals rush to cut reliance on materials produced in China.
Over the past three decades, China has built a dominant role in mining and refining rare earths, a cluster of 17 elements used in everything from wind turbines to military hardware and electric vehicles. The new rules don’t affect shipments of rare-earth products themselves, but may be intended to frustrate efforts to develop the industry outside China.
It’s interesting that it’s not the metals per se (though some of those have been restricted), but the technology to make use of many of the metals.
CES 2024: Welcome Back To Reality
There’s been a drift over the last five years by automakers away from traditional auto shows and towards the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. It was a way for those companies to flex their muscles as technology companies, and not just crude manufacturers of cars.
CES was also a place for startups to make outrageous claims about the future of AI in automobiles and the prospect of batteries that could deliver amazing range. The timing of this all made sense as AI and EVs were new and, more importantly, it was cheaper and easier to borrow money, meaning that it was a great time to hand out money to startups in hopes of big returns.
Easy money no longer exists, AI has not proven to be the gamechanger in autos some expected, and EV battery improvements are not exactly following Moore’s Law.
There are a pair of CES previews from Automotive News ahead of the show in January, and both are about the show grappling with this new reality of, well, reality. The first is about AI:
That was inevitable. The other one is about how big traditional suppliers like Bosch and Marelli plan to show off software and hardware to support EV operations. The description of what American Axle is doing is pretty typical:
The company will have its electric drive unit for hybrid and fully electric powertrains on display via the Mercedes AMG GT 63 S E Performance hybrid. It will also have its next-generation front and rear e-beam axles on display.
The show represents an opportunity for the driveline supplier to make its pitch to the industry as electrification picks up steam.
“CES is the premier event to showcase the full breadth and depth of our innovative solutions and tell our story to a broad range of customers,” American Axle CEO David Dauch said in a statement.
Ok.
A December To Remember/Contemplate
In November I suggested that this month might be a December to Remember for consumers thanks to increased incentives and inventory levels. I’ll have to wait a couple of weeks to know for sure, but the earliest indicator from S&P Global shows that sales likely hit 15.4 million light vehicles this year, albeit at a slowing pace.
“The end of 2023 brings the industry a glimpse into what could be yet another uncertain environment for US auto sales levels in 2024,” said Chris Hopson, manager of North American light vehicle sales forecasting for S&P Global Mobility.
“The good news is that incentives and inventory levels are progressing in the right direction. The not-so-good news is that this has not yet translated to momentum for sales levels,” Hopson said. “This could be a stouter signal that US consumers are tapped out, which would be a heightened risk for auto demand as new vehicle consumers continue to face affordability issues by way of high interest rates, tight credit conditions and slow-to-recede vehicle prices.”
“An uneasy consumer translates to an expectation of a mildly progressing auto sales environment next year,” Hopson added.” Stronger advances in new vehicle inventory could potentially result in increased incentives and dealmaking to help mitigate consumer headwinds.”
A lot of the activity was in Compact SUVs in November so it’ll be fun to see if that happened in December as well, largely because that’s where the affordability should be. The next data points I’m looking for are individual model performance (what was selling) and the average transaction price. If a lot of compact and subcompact SUVs sold in December and the ATP went down, then that’s good news for consumers.
What I’m Listening To As I Write This
Mariachi Flor De Toloache’s self-title debut album.
The Big Question
Can Tesla hit 2 million sales in 2024?
“Can Tesla hit 2 million sales in 2024?”
I’m pretty sure it will happen. How much over 2 million I think largely depends on how fast they can ramp the Cybertruck. Cybertruck sales will only be limited by supply because apparently they have recently gotten an increase in orders for it and it will be backordered for years:
https://www.torquenews.com/14335/tesla-cybertruck-seeing-massive-demand-two-tesla-employees-confirm-tesla-close-10000
We are talking about an order backlog of maybe over 2 million vehicles… which is to say it’s shaping up to have bigger volumes than the Model 3 and might even approach Model Y volumes… at least to fill backorders.
The bigger story will be revenue and profit. The Cybertruck won’t contribute that much. But I expect the energy storage, services (like revenue from charging stations) and the Semi to contribute more to the bottom line.
The problem with Gallium, Germanium ( both named after countries on either side of the Rhine ), Lithium and Cobalt ( from Kobold ) is not that China has a jump in mining…
The problem is that extracting, separating and refining them into industry grade metals is a PITA process filled with acids and toxic chemicals thats basically not economically viable in any western country. ( because it’s cheaper to do it elsewhere and the environmental laws are more lenient, allowing you to dump toxic acid wastes in the nearby river )
So mining & refinement companies went where the environmental laws & other stuff allowed to do as they saw fit : China ( thanks to under the table money ).
China as a whole is an industrial waste dump the size of a country in the making.
As a rule rare earth are not rare in the earth crust… They are called that way because they are not found in massive deposits like Iron or Copper. And any location with a small higher than usual concentration is a potential mine.
“Gallium nitride, which is a light, cheap-to-produce, and semiconductive material, is what makes on-board car chargers work way, way better.”
FIFY
“Everyone gets obsessed with lithium because it’s both the first word in modern batteries (lithium ion, lithium iron phosphate, et cetera) and typically the most common rare earth element by volume used in batteries.”
Also, Lithium is not a rare earth element, it is an alkali metal (like Na,K, etc).
Any bets they will ditch the goofy rear doors to save a few nickels?
For Tesla they’d have done 2 million already if the X didn’t have Falcon doors and the Cybertruck was just an X ute, probably be at 3 million by now. The 2 biggest markets in America, SUVs and Trucks, and they done messed up both. If they could get out of their own way and save the fanciness for the new Roadster they keep promising, they’d do great.
That’s all they needed to do was make a Rivian-ish competitor and/or a Maverick looking thing, but nooo
This is a very pragmatic and logical suggestion but if Tesla did these things they wouldn’t be Tesla.
Tesla removing the column stalks has been kind of the point of no return for me. I don’t think I can live with that decision
They’re chasing the BMW demo. They’ve never noticed those things anyway.
“ Gallium nitride, which is a light, cheap-to-produce, and superconductive metal”
I’m gonna be a little pedantic and say gallium nitride isn’t a metal. Ceramic (maybe intermetallic) is a better classification I think.
It’s also not a superconductor
If King Elon doesn’t manage to anger everyone in his attempts to be one of the cool kids, then Tesla should have no issues hitting 2 million sales in 2024. Some advice would be dump the flaming wreckage of Xwitter, buy a weed company and become chief product tester. Maybe open X Bank to handle credit cards and payment processing for them. Chill out and get affairs in order for the Mars colony.
I’d like Tesla to split into 3 companies: one to make cars, one for their charging stations, and one for Elon Musk’s crap. Elon would only stay involved in the “cool stuff”.
With this generation’s “wallstreetbets” “investors” I am guessing “Elon Musk’s crap” would end up with by far the highest market cap of the three.
The comment about the Tesla-branded charging stations just put something in my brain.
If, for example, Ford was making its own gas stations that could only be used by Ford vehicles*, would this represent an antitrust issue**? What if Ford vehicles got a discount on fuel?*
*Yes I recognize this is a moot point since everyone is switching to the Tesla charging standard. Follow up, is there a price difference if you’re charging a Tesla versus another make?
**Yes I’m aware that trust busting isn’t really a thing anymore.
“Chill out and get affairs in order for the Mars colony.”
A colony of one, hopefully.
Models 3 and Y look similar and can then share a fair number of parts to cut costs. 3 got a facelift, so Y needs to get the same new looks fairly quickly to maintain that cost-cutting advantage. Stands to reason that it will therefore get a fairly identical facelift.
“…lithium… the most common rare earth element by volume used in batteries.”
Lithium isn’t a rare-earth element. The rare earths are scandium, yttrium, and the lanthanides.
Yeah, it’s element #3. It’s not common like carbon but it’s not rare
In fact, lithium is one of the more common elements found in the Earth’s crust. It’s not lithium shortages we should be worried about.
No, lithium in its raw form isn’t a worry. It’s the refining that we aren’t set up for.
Not only that, but all of the more rare minerals that go into production of batteries and various EV components.
These oversized SUVs/CUVs/trucks built with triple-digit kWh battery packs and deliberately designed to be unrepairable are a massive waste of these resources and may cause us to run out of them before EVs can become a majority of the auto fleet. This could change if a recycling infrastructure is developed for the materials, but it doesn’t really exist yet.
I hope the non-collapsing suspension is standard this time.
“Tesla delayed a recall for four more years, until Chinese regulators pushed for one. China’s State Administration for Market Regulation, in a statement, cited a ‘risk of accidents’ in extreme cases of the aft-link part failure. Yet the automaker never recalled the part in the United States and Europe despite reports of frequent failures globally.”
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/#:~:text=In%20this%202020%20letter%20to,parts%20on%20'driver%20abuse.’
Reason 69,420 I’ll never buy Elon’s overrated commodity shit.
Agree. I test drove a Model Y two weeks ago and was fully on board with buying one at the end of April (tax return for down payment and we’ll have a 16 year old taking my commuter) until I saw all the claims of failed suspension parts Tesla was refusing to fix. Getting a hybrid Lexus ES 300 now. More secure resale value and 40+mpg is good enough to justify.
Two million in Tesla sales? I’d be happy if that was a dollar figure, but since it refers to vehicle totals, I hope not.
As soon as other manufacturers bring a substantial number of affordable EVs to market, Tesla won’t have a reason to exist besides Superchargers. But that’s been predicted every year for ten years now.
And by “other manufacturers” possibly putting Tesla at risk, they’re all Chinese ones. In the EV space, legacy companies are only a risk to themselves
Tesla is nearly tied with whatever Stellantis’ North American operations are going by now for 3rd largest US automaker (Jeep, Ram, Dodge, and Chrysler combined for like 1.86 million worldwide sales last year vs Tesla’s 1.82 million) – I’d say, using 2009 logic, they’re officially too big to fail at this point, and maybe should be included as the third member of the current Big Three alongside Ford and GM, due to Stellantis’ amorphous identity and structure.
Tesla is not going to be too big to fail, in a political sense, until it gives up the one actual advantage it has over Ford, GM, and Stellantis. No UAW.
Also franchised dealerships – those guys have a lot of political pull
Good point. I think when a lot of people think about how politically powerful the big-3 are they forget that on a lot of issues, the UAW and dealers are on their side.
If you’re meaning to group Tesla as one of the big three to suggest it now being a legacy company, then I guess the argument is just semantics. I was assuming legacy meant long-standing. It’s definitely not long-standing in terms of the number of years it’s been in existence compared to Ford and GM. That really applies to the major European and Japanese companies as well — which have all been around for well over half a century.
Tesla is 6 years older than General Motors
Yeah, it sounds like Juniper will be a heavyish face-lift of the current Model Y rather than a true redesign – new bumper/fascia, new hood, maybe new headlights. It’s Tesla’s newest model (bar the Cybertruck, if you want to include that) and if the S, X, and 3 haven’t moved on to new generations yet, that won’t be the first one to do so
c’mon man….put the letters in the order that SpaceKaren deemed to be appropriate: S 3 X
Speaking of sales events…
https://rumble.com/v434jpi-if-electric-car-ads-were-honest.html
Rumble, the video site for when your content is too racist for YouTube
Dude, it’s not that serious. lol
A few valid points about the horrors of mining, but mostly unadulterated right-wing bullshit. Just one example: it takes less than 2 years to even out the relative pollution between EVs and gas powered vehicles, not “more than 10 years” as the video states.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/truth-about-electric-cars-ad-why-you-are-being-lied-to/
Also: every complaint about mining applies to oil extraction too. (I didn’t watch the video, because I’m not going to click on a Rumble link)
I hadn’t heard of it before, but like The Who, I Won’t Get Fooled Again!
This been my favorite troll/propaganda/gotcha “facts”. Like yea dude, oil extraction is just the benign process of drinking a milk shake like Daniel Day Lewis explained
I didn’t post it as gospel by any means, I linked it because it’s kinda funny that people spent the time and effort to make it halfway decent quality wise.
As for the time to balance out emissions, what is interesting to me regarding the eco-impact of EVs is what is still “TBD” as far as the used market/end-of-lease existence of these vehicles. “Only time will tell” seems to be the best answer anyone has at this point.
Not really TBD. As the comment you’re replying to states, the time to lower lifecycle carbon is pretty short. And there are lots of model year 2012 EVs still functioning. Not all of them, of course, but quite a few.
Quite a few is right…for now. I think that as more and more EVs enter and exit circulation, the numbers will skew a bit more to falling in line with how ICE cars are disposed of now. When I say TBD, it’s because we won’t know what the tech will be able to salvage of these batteries in the future, how expensive it will be at mass scale, and the actual volumes of Li cars that will utilize it if it ends up being not really profitable to do so.
There are active EV battery recycling plants now. You’re right that they’re not at high volume yet because not that many EVs have hit end of life yet, but the technology and infrastructure exists.
Lithium ion batteries have been recycled for decades. This is one of the things I don’t get about EV skepticism. We’re not using voodoo pioneering technology for lithium ion EVs. They’re almost literally just large laptop batteries connected in various ratios of parallel and series
Neither of you guys are reading what I wrote. I think everyone knows that Li recycling exists, and everyone knows that it will not be the final energy form in the future. This whole conversation is about what happens to these battery packs in the future when other tech is implemented and it’s no longer worth it to bother with Li anymore.
It’ll be used for any other use of energy storage. Beyond that, it’ll be used for whatever else we need lithium for in the future. There’s no element that doesn’t have a use. If we want to speculate, fusion reactors need lithium.
I don’t understand why people only ask these questions for EV tech and then dump their single use plastic in the trash without giving a single damn
Of course there are many uses for lithium. That’s not the point.
What do you do with the batteries from your remotes, smoke alarms, wireless doorbells, etc.? Do you recycle them all, or do you pitch them? If you recycle them, that’s great! Not everyone does because it’s more of a pain than it’s worth and just end up buying new ones. Even rechargeable batteries eventually die and need to be replaced. Even if the batteries are still good, but they are the backup size D batteries that were used in that Casio keyboard that you don’t use anymore, what is to be done with those batteries? That’s the point. Sheesh.
Little harder to throw a 70 kWh pack in the garbage can.
They fit in the ocean and landfills though 😉
If some other battery tech comes along such that even the raw materials in today’s lithium packs is not worthwhile, then yes, some might be landfilled. Who cares?
Umm…wow.
No, we’re stating facts and you’re posting handwavy concern trolling from YouTube for Racists.
I don’t even know which comment you are replying to here. lol.
Maybe not rush to judgement that I am somehow trolling, which I am clearly not, just because I found a vid from a website you don’t like and posted it for a reason clearly explained above.
A lot of thing are recyclable, but aren’t recycled. In a lot of municipalities, all those recycling bins go to the dump. Who’s sorting the different plastics (many of which aren’t recycled even if they are recyclable and have to be separated, yet look much like other plastics)? What about all the people throwing in stuff that isn’t recyclable or damages the equipment, like greasy cardboard? In my town, they state not to clean the containers or separate plastic, glass, cardboard, etc. for recycling. I can make a strong guess as to why. It’s only gotten worse now that Asian countries we had been dumping this easy-to-process stuff on for recycling don’t want it. And now we’re talking about massive batteries that need heavy equipment to move around and remove and actual expertise to take apart, test, sort, store, and distribute. Batteries that are potential fire hazards. Sure, they have some market value—unlike some other materials—but the overhead is higher and the available employee pool is smaller. Then, what about when these packs have reached EoL in their secondary use as home power storage or whatever else? Are we just going to kick another can down the road and throw our hands up to assume some magic genius will fix this problem down the road when it’s largely going to be the same slime balls who always “solve” these problems, largely through exploitation, fraud, and illegal dumping, especially as long as it’s still cheaper to extract material in broke, corrupt nations? Recycling is environmentally only a little better solution than using new material. We need an actual plan and to not have giant stupid vehicles with giant stupid batteries, but that’s not what’s happening because we’re humanity and we are the garbage. Luckily, nature knows how to recycle us, if not how to eliminate the problem.
There is far too much value in a lithium ion EV pack for it to not be recycled
Same can’t be said about the meat sacks ranted about above.
Weird thing is that the video doesn’t actually come from a right-wing source. It is a part of Cracked’s Honest Ads series, and it’s supposed to be a rip on Tesla. Some of the ads are funny, though sometimes you can tell the Cracked people didn’t do a lot of research.
Wonder if they know their content was just completely stolen by that Rumble account?